


I’ve hungered for your touch a long, lonely time

by supersmashpotatoes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F, much plottier than what the summary lets on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-08-05 09:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16365284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersmashpotatoes/pseuds/supersmashpotatoes
Summary: Lexa seemed to have an instant hatred towards Clarke, although there was no apparent reason as to why. Clarke, however, took an instant infatuation towards the girl. She’d find herself staring in class, and looking for her during meals at the great hall. Once Clarke had bumped into a shelf at the library, sending the whole row spiraling downwards, because she’d spotted Lexa sitting at one of the tables, the light shining so perfectly off of her cheekbones, her lips pursed adorably, her eyes following her finger along the text she’d been reading. God, anyone else had been ruined for her ever since.





	1. The Scar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I joined up all the 3 chapter into 1 & cut the scene of them at the tower, which im going to edit and enter into the second chapter. I’ve made some changes that change the story slightly, so you should probably reread this chapter before the next update. 
> 
> i’m not changing anything anymore, i promise!! sorry for being a mess skjdkd

The sun beats down on her, through gaps in the leaves. The wind sways her little body from side to side but the mud her feet sink into keeps her grounded.

“Oli,” Her soft voice calls out into the forest. “Come out, Oli!”

A sharp sound stops her in her tracks. Her head tilts to the side, but she can’t make out where it’d come from. A bush to her right rustles loudly, shaking in her periphery. She turns around to inspect it, shuffles bravely through it and out the other side. There she finds Oliver, lying flat on the ground, still and unblinking with a creature wrapped around its entire body.

Clarke gasps, shuffling forward. “No!

The creature slithers, its body wrapping around Clarke’s dog more firmly, squeezing. Oliver whines, his eyes blinking towards Clarke, and she feels an anger she has never felt before build up within her. Her tiny fists clench and her eyes water and something grutal comes out of her throat, a mesh of growls and snarls more than they are words. “Leave,” she shouts, and she barely recognizes her own voice.

Amazingly, the creature obeys. Its grey scales expand as it untangles itself from the mesh of limbs it’d turned Oliver into, then slides deeper into the forest.

Clarke and Oliver walk back home side by side. When Clarke speaks of what had happened she can barely string the few words she knows together to give an avid description and all her Mother hears are the fantasies of a young child.

 

 

There is a shadow, tall and towering over a bed. A snake slithers around its shoulders and with the shadow’s laughter comes brief burstings of blinding green. There are tortured screams echoing through the enclosed space, and you can feel them as though they were your own. Maybe they are.

It’s electricity, coursing through your veins. Lighting you on fire, every fiber, every molecule. Your skin is tearing up, and you’re screaming and screaming but nothing is happening. There is a bed in front of you and the girl is frothing at the mouth, body contorted in a painful position, back bowed and arms strained, and there are scars forming as you watch. You are hurting but it is almost second hand.

 

 

When Clarke wakes up that day every object in her room is levitating, including herself. Her side feels under heat and she is sweating into the mattress.

Clarke blinks, leaning over the side of her bed to see how far she is from the ground underneath. It’s barely an inch, so she plops onto the ground, and the furniture follows her lead. She is young and likes to read and her parents don’t believe her.

It happens, again and again and again. Every few months she’d wake up from a horrid dream she can’t remember and her entire room would be afloat. Some days her side burns and her temperature rises and when she tries to tell her parents about the monsters in her head they chalk it up to fever dreams.

Years later, her dreams start to become more potent. The images stay with her in her waking moments; green lightning, and black ink; the sound of laughter, fear. She feels weak. Her mind is not her own and neither is her body.

Once again she wakes up, middle of the night. Her eyes are still unseeing, privy to something other than reality. Of white walls and white sheets, twitching limbs and drops of blood and timelessness, inevitability. She wakes up screaming, curled on her side. Her mother watches from the doorway as the bed rises, the lamp and the desks and the curtains, only to crash back down again the instant her daughter’s back bows and her eyes clear.

She closes the door behind her before she leaves.

 

 

They meet, at the ender age of eleven, on the Hogwarts Express.

Clarke asks to sit next to Lexa and Lexa shuts her down so abruptly and violently, slamming the sliding doors in her face. Clarke had thought she was pretty, like the lilies braided into her hair. Dejected, she moves on to find another seat.

She meets Raven, next, who allows her to sit in her compartment and trades her a Paracelsus card for a playful kiss on the cheek. Clarke tells her about Lexa, but she leaves out the part about the lilies and the pretty bow of her lips and how she looked before Clarke interrupted her, serene and oddly peaceful as she looked out the window; as she travelled further from her home.

 

 

She sits on an ordinary stool and a talking hat sits on top of her head. It hums and huffs and mutters to itself. It seems to be able to read her thoughts and respond to them, because when Clarke thinks _i can hear you, you know_ , the hat hushes her in response, chattering on and on about which house it should put her in.

 _Oh my_ , the hat gasps, after a while. _What_ , Clarke thinks, _what! tell me_!

“Gryffindor!” The hat shrieks out loud.

The room erupts into cheers, and a boy with a prefect badge welcomes her to the Gryffindor table, pulling her chair back for her and patting her shoulder reassuringly.

Raven’s turn is a long while later and she gets sorted into Ravenclaw almost before the hat even touches her head. The girl is rightfully pleased, judging from the wide grin and upturned thumbs she sends in Clarke’s direction. Her new house greets her with the same enthusiasm they’ve greeted the others before her, slamming cutlery on their table to some kind of practised rhythm and enveloping her in their arms.

The last student to get sorted is the girl from the train. She looks different in her robes, a wand held in her hand. She looks like she belongs.

The hat takes an exceptionally long time to make a decision, perched on top of the girl’s, Lexa’s, head. From her seat near the edge of the table Clarke can see the girl’s lips move, like she and the hat are having an honest to Merlin conversation. It goes on for about five minutes, before the hat cuts off the students’ murmurs with a loud, “Gryffindor!”

Clarke watches Lexa walk towards her, looking pale and bleak, like things had not gone as to plan. She wonders what the hat was telling her.

 

 

Lexa is at the top of every class; the smartest, the prettiest. Her hand was always up, her mind always open. She turned a match into a needle just like that, illuminated the top of her wand with a gentle and swift movement of the wrist, brewed a cure for boils while barely looking at the instructions in the book. She was the only one who payed attention during history of magic, the only one who didn’t fall asleep to the sound of Professor Binns droning on and on about gargoyle strikes and soap blizzards. She knew how to cure werewolf bites and how to cast The Knockback Jinx.

She was unique, in that perspective. She stood out, in every capacity. The only time Clarks ever saw Lexa struggle was during flying class.

The broom never followed Lexa’s command, never shot up at her shouted summon so that Lexa had to bend over and grasp it with her hand instead. Her posture was clumsy, her balance awful. She teetered to the left or right when mounting the broom, took to wearing muggle trousers and shirts after an unfortunate event where she tripped over her robes and fell chin first onto the ground. The others teased her for weeks. Clarke found it endearing.

Today Madam Hooch leads them all to the training grounds, where a set of flying rings are floating mid air. It looks suspiciously like something out of those racing video games muggles like so much.

 _Don’t look at her, dont look at her_ , Clarke urges herself. But, inevitably, her gaze wanders to the pretty girl at her side, the frown of her lips and the anxious tapping of her fingers. Clarke quickly looks away and tries not to smile.

They are given their instructions, and  
a few minutes in each student had lapped the course, exchanging high fives and demanding rematches. There is only one student left, struggling halfway through the grounds, twisting in awkward motions up in the air. Madam Hooch rolls her eyes tiredly and sends Clarke over to help her.

She hesitates for a moment, thinking of urging Madam Hooch to send someone else in her stead, but Lexa’s flailing intensifies, her jerky attempts to stay balanced only causing the situation to become more dangerous. Clarke has no choice but to mount her broom and fly, heart beating fast, the wind blowing her hair into her mouth.

She tries to speed up but the school issued broom can only go so fast and when she reaches Lexa she is hanging off her own broom with just one hand, gritting her teeth and resolutely not looking down.

Clarke, miraculously, manages to catch her just as Lexa’s fingers loose hold of the broomstick, while still flying at high speed. The sudden added weight is too heavy for her to manage and they both spiral downwards, Clarke trying in vain to lift the broom to slow them down and Lexa‘s arms tightening around her neck as she watches the green ground grow nearer and nearer.

Somehow she manages to maneuver them so that Lexa is pressing down from on top of her and she is the one taking the brunt of the fall. The back of her head crashes into the soil, a bunch of rocks dig into her spine. Lexa rolls off of her, and as she goes Clarke quickly turns to the side to relieve her back. She watches, uncomprehending, the skin of Lexa’s stomach and her back, the purple imprints and the slight branching redness travelling up her torso that get hastily covered by the cotton of her shirt even as she tumbles away. Clarke looks away, towards the sun, and its light is the last thing she sees before she blacks out.

 

 

Clarkes wakes up at the hospital ward to ten beds hovering off the ground, as well as torches and bedside tables, jars and other medical supplies. Clarke groans as she rolls onto her side, hurrying to bring everything down once again before anyone walks in. Her stomach protests, her side heating up persistently. She twists her legs sideways, touches her toes to the ground, and everything comes down with a gentle plop, as if mindful not to wake the rest of the castle.

Clarke lifts the loose collar of her gown, peering inside to inspect her side. Her eyes widen to see an addition to a scar she’d had since birth: a single black vein, rising from its edge as if the petals of a flower. It’s almost like its shaping itself  right before her eyes, changing and wriggling until it settles into its final form.

Scared out of her mind, Clarke scurries out of the hospital wing and to the Gryffindor Tower, robes in hand.

 

 

She spends most of the day switching between hiding away in the bathroom, poking at the scar and making sure that it’s real, that it is not the product of the overactive imagination her mother has accused her of having multiple times- and writing a letter to her mother, explaining the situation to her, trying to stick to factual statement instead of imagery, convince her of the truth of the situation.

Instinctually, she knows not to tell anyone else of it, knows that this is something to be hidden.

At lunch she avoids Raven and heads to the Owlery. Her owl goes off with her letter and she spends the rest of the day sick to her stomach.

 

 

“What an ungrateful Bitch,” Raven mutters.

Clarke startles, tearing her gaze off where it’d been set on Lexa. “What? Who?”

Raven rolls her eyes, turns back to her homework, “Your crush.”

“My-“ Clarke sputters indignantly, wanting to refute Raven’s claims but coming up short.

“No, seriously,” Raven insists, cutting her off. “You saved her the trouble of a concussion and she doesn’t spare you a glance. She never even thanked you.”

Clarke shrugs. Her eyes flutter and she can feel herself slip away, can’t do anything to stop it. She’s exhausted. Her thoughts and her dreams and the pain in her side have all been keeping her up at night. Although its been a month since she sent the letter she’s yet to get a response from her mother, and it’s adding to the worry she already feels for herself.

“If i were you i’d march right up there and- and say something!”

“What do you want me to say,” Clarke asks, not nearly as invested in the conversation as Raven apparently is.

“I don’t know,” Raven shrugs. “You’re welcome for saving your life?”

“Dont be dramatic, Raven. She was barely ten feet off the ground.”

The large book Raven had been reading from snaps shut. “Why do you like her so much?”

“I dont like her,” Clarke defends immediately.

“You obviously do!” Raven points her finger at Clarke accusingly. “All she’s ever done is be arrogant and rude towards you, and yet you look at her like she hung the sun!”

Clarke blinks, slow. “Why are you mad?”

“I’m not mad,” Raven rolls her eyes, like Clarke is the one being difficult. The grandfather clock chimes, indicating ten minutes until curfew. Raven starts packing her things. “I just don’t get why you like her, that’s all.”

Clarke watches Lexa’s fingers search for her quill absentmindedly, way off the mark, eyes not leaving the pages of her books. “She’s just pretty,” she tells Raven, shrugging.

 

 

The letter comes, finally, early December. In it is a clear message: Clarke is not welcome for the holidays. In much less forward and much nicer wording, of course. There is a long winded explanation, a work thing. The blatant disinvite to spending the holidays at home does not at all rattle her. She is used to spending Christmases and birthdays at her grandma’s, or just generally away from home. Clarke skips over the dull words until she reaches the very end of the expensive paper, a few words the only acknowledgement to the contents of the letter Clarke had sent nearly two months before.

Perhaps she had not properly explained the situation in her letter. Although Clarke does not understand what part of _my scar has evolved into a living organism apart of my own that can grow_  would prompt the casual response of _don’t worry about it honey._

It has always been like this, with her parents. No matter how old she gets, they will never believe what she says to be true. They live in a world with magic and flying broomsticks and a billion unbelievable things but it is only when their daughter speaks that they begin to doubt.

Clarke had heard enough stories to know what happens to people with abnormalities that others don’t understand; isolation and experiments and torture. It’s that scary image, of being strapped to a table and cut open, that prevents her from seeking help from any other source.

Instead, she goes to the library. The medical books are huge and she has little time she can squeeze between attending and studying for classes, so it takes a while. _The Healer’s Helpmate_ proves to be of no help and neither does _Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions_. Book after book after book, there is nothing that even hints towards the predicament Clarke had found herself in.

By the time Clarke is sure she will not find anything in those books it’s nearly Christmas already. She decides to forget about it for a while, as there is nothing she can do, and spends her free time hanging out with Raven. Clarke teaches her how to play tag and the two of them plus the many friends Raven accumulated play it; out on the field near The Forbidden Forest. Sometimes Lexa would be sitting way far back, near The Great Lake, and maybe Clarke would run extra fast just to impress her.

Afterwards they would all lay down on the ground, watching the leaves of the forest rustle from the wind and listening to the ominous sound of breaking twigs, wondering out loud what might be hidden in there.

 

 

_“To conceal you, the donkey's skin will be an admirable disguise, for when you are inside it, no one will believe that anyone so beautiful could be hidden in anything so frightful."_

Clarke shivers, closing the book and settling in bed. It is strange, trying to sleep in this big, mostly empty castle. She is used to hearing some kind of sound all the time, but now it is deathly silent, and there is nothing but the sound of her own breathing to lull her to sleep.

She dreams unpeacefully, every night. The same dream, sometimes clearer and sometimes not. Different in little, almost unrecognizable ways.

Some days she would wake up and write them down, but more often than not she would wake up too exhausted to even lift a finger, or too mortified to do much but lay down and breathe. Several dreams escape her grasp, and Clarke can’t help but be thankful for those few and far in-between mercies.

She deems the collection of parchment her dream journal. It is adequately filled, although some texts are shaky and are hard to decipher. There are elements present in every page, such as green lights, sometimes seeping through walls and sometimes glowing through closed eye lids. There are shadows, that laugh and touch and speak. And a girl, always a girl. Clarke can never see her, but she knows she is there. It might be herself or it might be someone else, mouth open and screaming, or jaw shut and mouth bleeding. Clarke wants to help her, to do something, anything. She’d feel the same pain, the electricity in her veins, hear the same voices.

_“We are closer now, i can feel it.”_

_“Who is it?”_

Can feel the same leather digging into her skin, strapping her down, creaking like her teeth.

_“She is hiding something, i can feel it.”_

_“Such immeasurable strength, but a limit to everything exists.”_

There it is again, the shadow with the glowing eyes. It touches a wand to the girl’s forehead.

“ _Who is it!_ ”

Clarke jolts awake, scrabbling for the parchment on her bedside table. It has become routine now, a habit imbedded into her very core. She writes, and writes, and writes, then goes back to sleep, exhausted.

When she wakes up she realises she has written the same three words. _Who is it who is it who is it who is it who_.

 

 

Her days are spent lazing around the castle. It is easier to sneak around to places she wasn’t allowed before, but she only uses the privilege to sort through the restricted section of the library. Now that she is sure of the abnormality of her scar her mind has gone terrifying places, like dark magic; a type of evil sorcery that hasn’t been openly practised for decades. Although she doubts strongly that she is carrying such a malevolent presence with her everywhere she goes. Her endeavor is half hearted at best. It feels like she will never find the answer.

Every day she gets weaker. For the first few days of the holiday she takes out the fancy brooms students have left in the shed, enjoys the freedom of flying by herself. She chases the golden snitch and dodges the bludgers and practices scoring. Then, by the end of the week, she settles for feeding the Giant Squid instead, now that Lexa is not here to take care of it. It’s hard, because the creature does not like her and keeps swatting the air around Clarke, hoping to catch her- but she has nothing to lose except time.

By the end of the holidays she can barely gather the will to do anything at all. There are bags under her eyes and when she looks in the mirror she sees what her mother looks like after a night shift, exhausted and just about ready to quit.

 

 

“ _You can’t hide forever_.”

“ _It is your destiny_.”

Dissolving into dust, skin and bone and cartilage. Every memory, every feeling, gone with the wind. A sword, piercing through her skin. A horn, stabbing through to her bone. Fingers, digging in. Fire, light, burning inside out.

There is that girl, again. There is no one around her, no shadows, no laughter, no screaming. There is one lightbulb above her head, hanging from a string. It casts a green light over the room, flickering in and out.

Every cell in Clarke’s body is telling her to go, run, this is a trap. But the girl calls her, the girl that Clarke has been visiting for years now. She walks closer, and closer, and closer still...

“Lexa?”

Her head turns, and-

And she wakes up, something stuck in her throat, hanging from the edge of her tongue. A scream, a name, a revelation

Clarke scrambles for the bed side table, her eyes unseeing, still stuck in that half dream state. She stretches out and her side aches, burns. Her hands scramble for the parchment and quil, an instinctive motion, but are hindered by an unfamiliar presence.

She blinks, realises that the table is floating, like her bed and her trunk and everything else in the room. By the time Clarke brings everything back down the last vestiges of her dream are gone, and she can only remember the green lights.

 

 

The last day of winter break Clarke drags herself to the entrance of the school to greet Raven. Her feet crash through the snow, sinking into it with every step. Clarke feels a memory nag at her, prodding for a reaction, a memory that she is too tired to search for.

She pays it no mind. Her feet propel her forward, excited to be in the presence of, finally, another witch her age. She gets near the gate and leans back against the wall, closing her eyes for a brief rest. She knows Raven’s calculating look will find her.

“You look like shit,” Someone says, and Clarke has to squeeze her eyes shut to trap the reactionary tears that spring. It’s not the words, but the familiarity that comes with them, the harsh way Raven pronounces her _S_. She’d been alone at the castle for only a little more than two weeks, but it had felt like forever.

Clarke opens an eye, knows Raven can see the tears lining her eyelid. There is something different about Raven, subtle yet all the more clear to Clarke. She looks older. “You don’t look so good yourself.”

  
Raven laughs, and stumbles forward to wrap Clarke in a hug. It feels like ripping off a bandaid, like blood flowing back where it was formerly restricted.

 

 

They settle at their usual seats at the Gryffindor table, Raven immediately reaching for every and any unhealthy option presented. Clarke tries to subtly look around.

“She’s over there.”

Clarke follows Raven’s finger, busted, to where Lexa sits at the very end of the table, picking at her breakfast with a fork. She turns, sudden and unexpected. Their eyes meet and Clarke feels a sharp pain at her side.

Clarke hisses, clutching at her flank. She waves off her friend’s concerns and Raven looks from where her friend is to where Lexa had been, the seat now empty, wondering.

 

 

Clarke stares off towards the forest, watches the light of the sun hit the grass and retreat. Raven is by her side, panting in exertion. It all feels so normal, so good. She turns her head and there is Lexa, by the Great lake. As sad as ever, alternating between reading and throwing bread crumbs for the Giant Squid. Clarke wonders what it is that draws her to Lexa. Why she is so fascinated by someone so angry and mean. It seems to her like a question only grown ups would know the answer to.

 

 

Clarke returns to her dorm room, exhausted from the examinations and her increased lack of sleep. Her roommates are all in the common room, having packed their belongings in preparation for the train ride home tomorrow. Clarke, as usual, is running a bit late in schedule.

She upturns her bag onto the bed, intending to shove whatever she has in there into her suitcase along with her other belongings. A sheet of paper falls onto the bed, white with blue lines. It’s obviously something a muggle would own, and definitely not Clarke’s. She grabs for it, turning it around to inspect the other side. There, in elegant curves, read the bold words:

_meet me at the top of the Astronomy Tower, at midnight._

She recognizes the handwriting from  multiple classes spent faraway, watching Lexa’s hand as it twists and twirls and turns. And there really is no question as to whether she is going to obey the script, not if the script includes having Lexa finally give her the time of day.

 

 

Clarke tiptoes, out of the common room and towards the Astronomy Tower, a hood thrown over her curly head for extra measures. The consequences of sneaking out after curfew seem less than now that they are just a few hours from returning home for the summer.

The walk is long enough for her to make up ridiculous scenarios, from Lexa belatedly thanking her for helping her months ago during that flying lesson, to being pushed off of the tower and to her death. This entire year she’s been crushing on someone she doesn’t know at all and both plots seem just as likely as the other.

Clarke doesn’t encounter any patrolling prefects on her way, or meddling ghosts. Just her and the stars, and soon, Lexa.

She reaches the top of the tower easily, used to the stairs after an entire year of Astronomy lessons. She can see Lexa’s silhouette through the translucent window in the door, and when she opens it she can see her properly, the curly mane of her hair flying in the wind. It’s beautiful enough, just this, the way Lexa looks from behind, to make Clarke second guess, to make her want to turn right back around and pretend she never saw the note, never knew that Lexa was waiting for her patiently on top of the largest tower, before the sunrise of the first summer.

“Clarke,” Lexa turns around, calling her by her name, the sky a backdrop, her eyes the color of Mercury through Clarke’s telescope.

“Why’d you call me here?” Clarke asks, her arms crossed to protect herself against an invisible threat. She’s surprised at the strength of her voice, the confidence in her tone. She’d expected to feel- maybe shy, or something synonymous with being alone with your crush for the first time. Instead she feels wary, an emotion she is much more equipped to deal with.

Lexa looks skittish, nervous in a way that makes Clarke touch her wand through the pocket of her coat uneasily. Knowing now, almost for sure, that nothing good will be coming out of this meeting.

Lexa takes a few sudden steps forward, wide and threatening and Clarke walks backwards, startled. Where she expects Lexa to stop Lexa keeps going, until Clarke’s butt meets the wall and Lexa’s hips meet hers. Lexa takes a hold of the lapels of her coat, bunching them up in her fists and pulling her closer until their noses touch. Clarke is being held against the only thing seperating her and an outrageously large drop.

One push and she could fall to her death.

“Who are you,” Lexa growls.

Clarke grips her hands, trying to push her away. Her wand is underneath Lexa’s hands, pushed against her chest, out of reach.

“What the hell is wrong with you,” Clarke gasps.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading y’all!!


	2. Knockturn Alley

Lexa blinks, looks from Clarke’s wide eyes to her gaping mouth and to her own hands, white knuckled around the lapels of Clarke’s coat.

She blinks again, and the fight leaves her body, the blood returns to her knuckles. She lets go of Clarke’s coat, but her hands remain on her shoulders, and she steps even closer. It’s the closest they’ve been since they hurtled towards the ground, entertwined with each other; nearly seven months ago now.

She needs to see. She needs to know if Clarke is who she thinks she is.

“Do you remember?” She asks Clarke, much gentler. “Do you remember your dreams?”

Clarke startles, a miniscule jerking of her neck. Lexa can practically see her retaining her memories, putting pieces together and coming to a conclusion, can practically hear the click when it all falls into place.

Lexa’s eyes disappear behind her eyelids. “I wasn’t sure it was you,” She says.

They stay where they are, just for a moment, the faint cold the breeze still holds blowing through their hair. Then Lexa’s eyes open and she steps back, letting go of Clarke. It takes only a moment but soon her mask is back and she is standing straight shouldered and stiff.

Clarke struggles to find her words.

“Lexa, i don’t understand what-“

“You need to stay away from me.” Lexa cuts her off, “They’re trying to find you.”

“Who?” Clarke asks nervously. She fidgets for a second and comes up with her wand, clutched tightly in her hand. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know who they are,” Lexa says. “They come when i’m asleep. They try to find you.”

“Why are they looking for for you?” She presses. “What did you do?”

Clarke shakes her head, “I didn’t do anything! Just- explain this to me, please. You’re the girl? From the dreams?”

“They’re trying to find you,” Lexa repeats, eyes wide and manic. Her hands are moving with every word and it’s the most animated Clarke has seen her, ever. Even when they were hurtling towards the ground with Lexa’s arms around Clarke’s neck she had been absolutely silent and still, resigned to her fate as it approached at a dull bullet’s speed. “They’re wicked, Clarke. The things they’ve done, the things they will do. Trust me, you don’t want to be found.”

“I don’t understand,” Clarke says helplessley. “They’re just dreams..”

“They’re not just fucking dreams,” Lexa snarls, angry again. “I’m being tortured Clarke, on your expense.”

“This is crazy,” Clarke shakes her head. “We need to ask someone, an adult, for help. If what you’re saying is true-“

She starts walking to the door, feeling whiplashed and frightened to the bone. Lexa grips her wrist in an attempt to stop her and a hot searing pain makes Clarke stumble to get away.

She yelps, tries to dislodge her grip, “You can’t trust anybody,” Lexa warns, her fingers tightening for a brief second before she lets her go. Clarke draws in a shuddering breath, snatches her hand back to examine it shakily. There is a large red welt already forming- in the same exact place as the one she had years ago, when Olive had gotten frightened by a snake and accidentally bit her.

The thought feels out of place. Clarke’s eyebrows furrow, a memory trying to grab her attention, but Lexa begins to advance and Clarke has no choice but to shake it off. She stays put this time, recovering quickly and assuming the duelling stance, all previous, naive notions of a night beneath the stars completely gone.

“Look at this,” Lexa shouts, seething. She holds out her palm, pinking dangerously. Clarke feels her own palm throb around her wand. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. This is- the darkest shade of dark magic. Those who practice the Dark Arts Clarke, they’re corrupt. They love your pain, they relish in it.”

“I know,” Clarke whispers, shivering. She remembers, the laughter, the screams. “If i’d known it was real...”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lexa sighs. She reaches into her robes jerkily and comes up with a parchment. “This is an incantation, a memory wipe spell. I need you to perform it on me.”

“A memory wipe?” Clarke asks, incredulous. She reaches forward for the parchment. “Obliviate,” She reads, and a few green sparks weakly fizzle out of the tip of her wand.

“Careful!” Lexa snatches the parchment back angrily. “This is a complex spell. You’re dealing with my brain here, my personality. This isn’t a joke.”

“It must be,” Clarke insists, shaking her head dumbfoundedly. “Otherwise you’re asking me to erase your memory!”

Lexa rolls her eyes, “God, don’t be daft. I need you to wipe all memories of _you_ from my mind. Everything else will remain just the same.”

Lexa must read the quizzical look in her eyes. She glances briefly at her watch. “I don’t have time to explain. The prefects have a patrol in less than an hour, and we can’t risk them spotting us together.”

“I’ll be quick, then. I have a lead,” Lexa continues, “This scar I’ve had since birth. It changed, when you helped me that day on the grounds. A part of it disappeared.”

She lifts up her shirt, revealing a huge scar just like Clarke’s, covering the places missing on Clarke’s body. “They’d gotten closer that day, and have been getting even closer since.”

Lexa’s shirt goes back down over her skin. “This is why, you understand? These are the measures they’ve taken, this is how far they are willing to go to find you.”

“We can ask for help,” Clarke stutters. “Jaha, he can help us! my parents-“

 _I’m twelve_ , she wants to scream. _I can’t deal with this!_ But Lexa’s features suddenly soften and Clarke’s words quiet down and fall to their knees, watching, tamed, as Lexa comes closer, her steps gentle.

“I need you,” Lexa says, resting her forehead against Clarke’s. She pauses, and Clarke thinks that’s all she’s going to say, but then, “To do this for me. Please.”

Lexa edges closer, until their noses touch. Her fingers caress the edges of Clarke’s ears, and when she pleads, “Please. Help me,” their lips almost touch.

Clarke remembers, the girl strapped to the table, the crowd laughing around her while she convulsed and screamed and begged. The pain, the froth, the bending of her back and the vibration of every cell in her body. All miniscule, compared to what Lexa goes through.

“Yes,” She gasps, her arms reaching out to hold her close. “Anything.”

 

 

Lexa watches from the roof as Clarke walks back to the castle. A longing pulls at her chest, to follow her, to take her to the demons in her head and scream, this is her! this is the girl you’ve been looking for. Now let me go. Leave me alone.

She can not be saved. The demons only come in her sleep, secret and out of reach. They strap her down and they try to pry secrets out of her mouth and they disappear the moment she wakes up, leaving behind imprints on her side- a scar, wiggling and changing and alive, morphing to accomplish a plan she is unaware of. It’s torture. And although she sometimes wishes it to be on anyone, anyone but her, she would never allow another person to go through what she has. She can not be saved, but Clarke can.

 

 

Clarke excuses herself from the compartment she’s sharing with her friends under the guise of a full bladder. She walks back to the front of the train, heart beating loud and fast, and sneaks into the third compartment to the left.

“I thought you’d be asleep.”

Lexa’s head jerks back from its perch on the window, her teeth bared readily. Clarke gets a flash of deja vu, of the expression Lexa had worn when Clarke first met her, right here in this same exact compartment, right before she was unceremoniously rejected. But once Lexa recognizes who the voice belongs to her expression resets itself, and she doesn’t kick Clarke out.

“It’s hard for me to fall asleep,” Lexa admits, vulnerable in a way she’s only allowing herself to be knowing that she will soon have no memory of this conversation.

Clarke gulps at the words, guiltily tucking her wand back into her robes.

“You know, when i was researching the spell, i read about this incident, a few hundred years ago.”

There’s a bit of a smile tilting the edges of her lips as she speaks, and Clarke feels welcome enough that she enters the compartment, closing the glass doors behind her softly and taking a seat across from Lexa.

“There was a mass operation, involving one hundred and sixty-seven Memory charms and the largest ever Mass Concealing Charm performed in Britain.”

Lexa laughs, meeting Clarke’s eyes. “The morning after these alleged crimes,” she drawls, amusing Clarke and pulling her into the story at the same time. “A gleaming scarlet engine and carriages astounded the villagers of Hogsmeade, while several bemused Muggle railway workers down in Crewe spent the rest of the year grappling with the uncomfortable feeling that they had mislaid something important.”

Clarke giggles, a sound very unlike her, and Lexa looks back out of the window like a job well done.

“I wonder,” She says softly, once Clarke’s brittle laughter has died out. “Whether i’d feel like i’ve missed someone important.”

Clarke flounders, not knowing quite what to say.

“When i forget you,” Lexa goes on, blunt and detached in the normal way she always is, as if she isn’t even talking about herself. “I won’t be able to figure out this predicament we’ve found ourself in. Our connection is the key, and it is that which you will be wiping.”

“I know,” Clarke nods.

“I hope my faith in you is well placed.”

“It is,” Clarke insists.

They fall into silence. Clarke sorts through the careful list she’s repeated to herself all night long until it was embedded into her brain. All the things Lexa had mentioned and the things she’s noticed herself; the green light, the scar. They share dreams, a complex linkage. It’s her job to find out why.

“Good,” Lexa nods to herself, pleased. “You should go, before anyone comes. Come back in a few hours.”

Clarke stands, dutiful. “I’ll figure this out,” she promises. She reaches out to touch her but Lexa flinches away and Clarke steps back. The guilt gnaws at her and settles like a lump in her throat, a painful contraction of her heart, a heavy weight she carries like anvils in her pockets.

“You should go,” Lexa repeats.

 

 

The truth is, the more time she spends awake and with Clarke, knowing who she is and all the pain she’s caused her, the more she thinks of betraying her.

 

 

Clarke goes back a few hours later when Lexa is asleep and tries not to think of what she might be dreaming. She stands there for ages, head tilted up to the sky and tears stinging at her eyes and her stomach rolling and hurting and aching. Then she gathers a breath, hand curling into a fist.

She mutters the spell like a curse, prying it from between her teeth, turning the wand in her hand just like Lexa had taught her.

Lexa remains peacefully asleep all the while, not even a twitch of an eyebrow or a finger. When Clarke leaves, again, it’s as if she had never even been there.

 

 

Her mother hums, inspecting Clarke’s side with a probing finger. Clarke holds up her shirt with one hand and munches on her cereal with the other. The muggle food her father occasionally brings for her to indulge in is probably one of the  things she had missed the most while she’d been away. “So, what do you think?”

“Well,” Abby leans back, taking off her glasses. “It’s just the way it looked before, honey.”

The spoon clatters back in her cereal, the milk sploshing out on to the table. Abby makes a disapproving sound and moves to grab a cloth.

“What do you mean?” Clarke asks stupidly. She twists, following her mother’s path across the kitchen. “Look!” She points at the scar, precisely at the point where the new addition starts. “This was definitely not there before!”

Abby sighs, her back to Clarke. “You can check the photo albums, if you’d like.” Her shoulders are hunched, and Clarke thinks she might snap, but she turns around with a sweet smile and moves to wipe the droplets of milk. “But i think i would know if the scar my daughter has had since birth suddenly mutated.”

Her mother insists she finishes eating before getting up, so Clarke scarfs down her food, answering questions about school and friends and if she’d made sure to eat healthy. She finishes quickly, and before she gets up her mother stops her with a hand around her wrist. She grabs Clarke’s chin, unbearably gentle, and presses a kiss to her temple. “I missed you,” she says, smiling soft.

Clarke returns the sentiment and escapes to the upper floor, bounding up the stairs and into her parents’ room. It had felt weird, coming back home to all these little changes and tweaks. There’s a new vanity, brown and sleak and expensive looking, and Clarke stands in front of the mirror with the album she’d retrieved from its drawers on its sleek surface.

Clarke opens it, flipping past various photos of herself before stopping at the one she had been looking for. It’s her, in the bathroom of their old, crappy apartment. She’s sitting cross legged in a makeshift bathtub, her knees pocking out the edges and her baby teeth smiling wide for the camera. The scar is clear as day, overwhelming to look at as it covers her entire small body.

Clarke lifts her shirt, looking at it in the mirror and then down at the album to compare. They’re exactly the same.

 

 

They spend the rest of the summer without communication. Of course they do. They’re not supposed to talk, not until Clarke figures everything out. Lexa doesn’t even know who Clarke is right now. It keeps her up at night. She keeps seeing herself, standing over Lexa, uttering a confident incantation because Lexa didn’t say it in many kind words but she knew that she had to be strong. She remembers the relief she’d felt when her stomach settled, knowing that she herself is safe for the meantime.  She hides beneath the covers of welfare she’s been given and lies in the guilt that comes with it.

 

 

Her father comes into her room one day, when it’s past midnight and she’s in bed. He enters without knocking, closing the door swiftly behind him.

“Hey,” he says. He walks closer to her and sits on the edge of her bed, his hand going up to brush against her curls. Clarke smiles at him, and he smiles back. “I’ve been hearing you toss and turn all night. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Clarke says, instinctively. And then, more honest, “Just thinking.”

“Thinking,” Her father hums, always accepting. “Did you like the book i gave you?”

“Yes,” Clarke lies. “It was good. I liked the donkey thing.”

Jake’s hand stills. “So you understand it, then.”

Truthfully, Clarke doesn’t. She hasn’t even finished it, isn’t particularly planning to either. But it’s nearly two am and her father’s hand in her hair has managed to call sleep on her behalf; she isn’t particularly in the mood for one of his lectures. “Yes,” she says.

“Good.”

They’re silent for a while. Clarke’s eyes are drooping shut, her father’s hand persistent as it continues to stroke through her hair.

“You’ve always been my daughter,” her father begins speaking again. Clarke’s eyes jolt back open. “You inherited your love for science from me. Your passion for art, too. Although mine is confined to blueprints.”

He chuckles, looking back at Clarke from where he was staring at the wall, and she smiles tiredly at the sound.

“Your mom, she...” He trails off, looking away once again. “You’re nothing like her... Except for your stubborness.” He laughs again, a deep rumble. Clarke lets her eyes slip close. “It’s why I love you both,” she hears him say, just before she falls asleep, quiet in her fear.

 

  
They walk through the Leaky Cauldron to a rear courtyard. Her father looks at her expectantly and she taps at the brick in the wall, counting three up and two across, three times. The wall goes in a small hole first but then forms a large archway. Her father shakes his head, astonished just as he was the first time, his engineering brain unable to make sense of any of this.

It’s driving him crazy, Clarke knows, and she laughs delightedly as they walk through Diagon Alley. They stop at Eeylops Owl Emporium, to get treats for Atom, and buy Sundaes from Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, and they leave Flourish & Blotts with their arms heavy with seven large books.

They split ways then, so that her father can meet up with some guy he’s planning to work with and Clarke can supposedly browse for a potential broomstick.

Instead, Clarke walks past The Broom Shop and around the corner, off to Knockturn Alley. It’s a place that Clarke had never been allowed to go in, and for good reason. It’s dark, tight and crowded. The people all wear black clothes, and crowd in groups of three or four, whispering, their heads following her as she walks past nasty window displays of shrunken heads, large cages alive with gigantic spiders, signs announcing sales for poisonous candles.

Clarke stops in front of a shop some way down the alley. _Borgin and Burkes_ , the sign reads. _Ancient Objects With Unusual and Powerful Properties._

There is a necklace on display in the front window, blue and shimmering. Clarke thinks it is beautiful even after she reads the label, _Caution: Do not Touch. Cursed - Has claimed the lives of ninteen Muggle owners to date._

It effectively peeks Clarke’s interest, just like Clarke supposes it was meant to. She pushes the door open and walks in.

It’s very dimly lit, not unlike everywhere else in this alley had been. Although it’s quiet large it feels tiny and cramped as it is crowded with the most sinsiter of items. There are skulls on every surface, an array of leering masks that line the walls, spiked instruments and a hangman’s rope haging from the ceiling. Everything Clarke touches leaves an imprint of dust on her fingers.

She moves to investigate a pair of large black cabinets against a wall, and it’s when she moves to open one of them that a voice stops her in her tracks.

“Not lost are you, dear?”

A stooping man had appeared behind the counter, smoothing his greasy hair back from his face.

“No,” Clarke says, letting go of the cabinet’s knob. She walks back towards the counter, trying to appear confident though she was very scared. “I’m very interested in the Dark Arts.”

“Ah,” The man nods. “And to what are you curious about, dear?”

He walks out from behind the counter, signalling for Clarke to follow him.

They stop before a withered hand, twitching as it rests against a cushion.

“The hand of glory?” The man asks, gesturing wildly. “Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers!”

Clarke shakes her head no, and they move on.

“Or is it potions that are you interested in?” The man asks. Then, without waiting for a reply, “One drop could render your enemy,” He points at a vial with each word deftly, “Paralysed, hysteric, devoted, or- the best of all,” He turns to her, fangs bared in a smile. “Dead.”

“No,” Clarke says, horrified.

“Well it must be this then,” the man moves on readily. Before Clarke can squeeze in a word he is talking again, his voice as oily as his hair.

“The Opal necklace, used in the attempted assassination of the former Hogwarts Headmaster, Albus Dumbeldore,” The man’s lips curl up in a snear. “If not death it would cause horrible pain. One touch, no matter how miniscule, and you would rise gracefully into the air, screaming in terror.”

He talks faster, excitement and thrill rendering his tongue clumsy. “Whatever you see, or whatever you feel, causes you terrible anguish. I find myself itching to touch it especially when i’m at my happiest, craving that delicious pain and knowledge, those few miserable moments in which you’re rising into the air, awaiting your fate.”

He turns around to ask the young girl if this is what she came for, shaking his head to ward off the daze he’d fallen in, but there is no one behind him. He turns back to the necklace, his fingertips itching, begging. One day.

 

  
Clarke stumbles out of the shop and back down the Alley, reeling and dizzy. She keeps flashing back, to the hunger in the man’s eyes as he longed to carress the necklace, barely restraining himself from leaping forward and clutching it to his chest. She keeps thinking of his unwavering devotion, coming with no potion, entirely self taught; and of the scar on her side and what it must bring, death or hysteria or brokenness; livelihoods as jagged as its unfinished ends. She keeps thinking of Lexa, and how she’s probably too weak to save her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you like it!! let me know what you think :)


	3. The Dark Mark (i)

Molding walls. Tree branches banging on windows, rustled aggressively by the wind. There’s a faint smell of burning and water, like a fire has just been let out. Drip, drip, droplets fall down from the ceiling, occasionally hitting Clarke, on her head, her arms.

She looks down at her bare feet trudging on murky floors, and curls her nose disgruntedly. She wonders why she is barefoot but the thought is pushed aside as she walks forward, through the dripping droplets and the swishing water and towards the green, calling her forward, calling her home, distracting her from all else.

Every hallway leads to another hallway, every door leads to another door, and every choice takes her back to the beggining. The trees bang on the windows harder, the dripping drips faster, the water constricted in the cracking of the floor boards overflows and rises to her ankles. She’s panting when she finally finds her.

Bathed in green, shivering, a girl strapped down to a table. It’s a familiar sight, but it cuts Clarke open yet again, because now she knows who she is, and she aches for her.

She walks closer. Her senses tell her to leave, to find a way back out, that it’s not safe. Her wand begs her to grab it but instead an urgency to reach her overwhelms Clarke and she runs forward until she can hold Lexa’s face in her hands. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” she promises.

Clarke hurries to unfasten the binds attaching Lexa’s arms to the table. There are so many of them, around her wrists and her forearms and her biceps, around her ankles and her legs and her thighs. She panics, yanking at the leather uselessly.

Lexa’s mouth moves but the dripping is so loud she can’t hear what she’s saying. Clarke leans forward, trying to figure what the repititive shapes her lips make are supposed to sound. The dripping comes down even faster and harder, until the room is enclosed in rain, rushing and loud. Suddenly, its contact burns, and Clarke lets Lexa go, jolts back with a yelp.

The second they disconnect the rain no longer hurts her but Lexa is screaming, muscles clenched and back bowed and blood coming out of her mouth. The water burns her clothes, and then her skin, and clears the smoke before it even begins to form.

Clarke reaches for her again. When she moves her arm the skin aches where it had burnt and the memory of the pain has her waking up again.

 

 

 

Abby waits, painstakingly, for hours. She waits until night comes; she waits until her husband has gone to sleep; and then she waits a little more. Finally, when the sun begins threatening to color the sky with its light and block the stars from sight, she puts her book down and walks silently to the vanity.

The album she wants is at the very top. She grabs it, taking one last look back at Jake to make sure he is still asleep, before sneaking out of their room.

Their daughter’s room is just across from theirs. The door creaks loudly as she opens it, the way it has for half a decade, even as Jake continuously claims that he will fix it with his muggle tools, even when Abby could do it with a twirl of her wand, because they both secretly love the wearing out of their home, the way it crumbles a little with their use.

Clarke is asleep, one leg kicked out of the comforter and the rest of her body swaddled in it. Abby sighs. She hates to do this.

 

 

 

The news come during a sleepy morning, Clarke and her parents on the couch in their living room instead of the kitchen table, drinking tea and eating a full breakfast. Her father, to her right, watching the news; and her mother, to her left, reading the newspaper.

“It started,” Abby breathes out. Both Clarke and her father turn to look at her.

“What’s started?” Jake asks.

Abby turns the paper to show them. A picture of the night sky, black and starry, and a skull, white, etched against it like a new constellation, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue.

On top, in big blocky letters: DEATH EATERS RETURN: THE DARK MARK RISES.

 

 

 

Clarke had been doing some research, albeit a bit reluctantly, grappling with both a desire to run as far as she can and away from reality and a sense of duty to Lexa, who had sacrificed herself for a girl she never knew. So when Abby starts explaining what the article means nothing of what she says sounds new to Clarke. It just sounds even more real, more immediate.

“It’s not going to last long,” Abby reassures her. “This happened before. Just give it a few weeks and it’ll blow over. Nothing to worry about.”

Clarke thinks of the girl strapped six times over, trapped and with no escape for Merlin knows how long, and wonders.

 

 

 

A wonderful smell wafts from the kitchen, a mix of her father’s meat spices and her mother’s delicious tomato soup. The doorbell rings just as Clarke is about to check on the oven for the umpteenth time, her stomach growling with the hunger of a missed lunch. She runs to open the door and greet their guests, content for just a moment to be around company she has missed.

Jaha greets her with a warm hand on her shoulder, ever persistent at maintaining a professional boundary despite the contradiction of having dinner with his best friend’s family. Wells, devoid of such political burdens though he had been lectured by his father many a times, pulls Clarke into a warm hug.

They split up, as they always do, Jaha disappearing into the kitchen and Clarke and Wells off to participate in their newly subdued form of mischief. They huddle close, talking in hushed voices, tucked into a corner of the living room couch.

“Have you seen the newspaper?” Wells asks.

“Yeah, mom says it’s nothing to worry about.”

Wells cranes his neck sideways, making sure the quiet chatter of their parents in the kitchen hasn’t stopped.

“She’s lying to you,” he tells Clarke. “I’ve been spying on dad. He says the Ministry has been forcing the Daily Prophet to keep all sorts of stuff from the public.”

“Like what?” Clarke leans even closer, eager.

“The death eaters have been breaking into homes,” Clarke’s jaw drops open and Wells nods solemnly. “They haven’t killed anyone. They don’t steal anything. Dad says it looks like they’re looking for someone.”

Clarke’s blood runs cold. She turns pale, and she wraps her arm around her stomach. Wells leans forward to reassure her but a booming voice breaks them apart.

“Break it up lovebirds,” Jake laughs, oblivious. “Dinner is ready!”

 

 

 

She’s dreaming of beaches and of lounging in the sun, of yachts and playing chess in balconies, her hair flying and her skin cooled by a soft breeze, content.

She’s dreaming of rollercoasters and airplanes, Malaysia and Thailand, monkeys stealing her bananas and dogs stealing her wings, happy.

She’s dreaming of forests and mud, of the sharp sound of twigs snapping and the rustling of bushes, of momentary darkness before the light shines again, brave.

She’s dreaming of slithering, hissing, biting snakes. Of anger and fear, building up inside of her and then, release. “I’ve found you,” the snake hisses, baring its teeth.

 

 

 

When Clarke wakes up the scar has expanded. She doesn’t tell her mom, and she doesn’t check the photoalbums.

 

 

 

Clarke sticks her head out of the train’s window, trying to catch a last glimpse of her mother, but all she can see is the ruffle of her hair in the breeze and the back of her red coat; she is already walking away.

 

 

 

They disembark from the train, dragging their suitcases behind them. The first years are led through a shady path and to where, out of sight, will be a set of boats waiting at the edge of the lake. The second years, Clarke included, smirk as they follow the older students to the carriages waiting for them, delighted with the feeling of being one step ahead of the food chain.

Clarke follows Raven and Octavia- who are chattering loudly about Exploding Snaps although they had just met -through narrow openings in the crowd. It leaves Clarke the chance to ground herself, and to breathe. The air is stuffy, recycled through the hundreds of students pushing ahead.

While Clarke’s friends both hop onto one of the carriages clumsily, Raven sharing her theories as to what makes them autonomous to someone who’d finally shown some interest in her ramblings, she walks past them, follows the white lillies through the crowd until the girl carrying them in her hair stops in front of one of the carriages.

“You don’t see them.”

The words slip between the steel, bloody bars that surround Clarke’s heart and imbed themselves in its chambers, beating rapidly with each pump of her blood.

They’re said so sadly Clarke almost wishes they weren’t spoken at all.

“See what?”

“Thestrals.” Lexa jumps into the empty carriage, and Clarke scrambles to follow her in. “They’re what pulls the carriages.”

For a moment Clarke envisions Lexa in place of Octavia, blowing Raven’s mind instead of the other way around. She knows she shouldn’t hope, but she holds on to the image with both hands.

“And you can see them?” She asks.

Lexa nods, but doesn’t offer an explanation. Clarke takes the opportunity, as she always has, to observe her, her eyes trailing from her high forehead and to her full lips intently. There is anger etched into every crevice, pain hiding alongside the sharp jut of her jaw.

“So it didn’t work,” Clarke closes her eyes, sinking down a bit in her seat defeatedly. Lexa steals a look and sees her irises moving beneath her eyelids, a dreamer awake. “The spell.”

“No, it worked. But the moment i saw you again i knew. It all came back.”

Their eyes meet, and Clarke’s hand instinctively moves to cover her side. She sees Lexa track her movement, a heavy set to her shoulders, but she can’t bring herself to let go.

“We need to talk,” Lexa says, rough. Clarke hadn’t heard her speak in months; not even in her dreams, although Lexa had tried to. A shiver makes its way down her back.

“Are you okay?” Clarke asks, reaching out to touch her. She watches her fingers close up on Lexa’s cheek and remembers, Lexa flinching away before Clarke cowardly twisted her wand and Lexa bowing beneath the rain burning her skin before Clarke ran away. She draws back, jerky and sudden. “I left you. You were burning. Screaming.”

“It was a dream, Clarke.” Lexa says. Neither one of them believes it. “There was nothing you could do.“

They fall back into silence. Clarke takes the opportunity to consider her next words, watching a single fluffy cloud follow them along the road.

“I don’t think you’ll get them anymore,” she finally decides on saying. “They know who i am. They’ve been looking for me.”

“It’s because of me,” Lexa admits bluntly. Clarke’s head swivels to stare at her, betrayal seeping into her expression immediately.

“I couldn’t help it,” Lexa reasons. “They don’t need words, or a name. They just needed my mind to weaken, and when i saw you, it did.”

The moment she‘d seen Clarke everything had come rushing back. She could see her clearer; every blonde and every brown hair, the exact color of her eyes memorised from when they pressed close on top of the highest tower, the exact position of the freckle on top of the lips Lexa nearly kissed, just to try it, just to see what it would be like. She remembered everytime she’d seen her, talked to her, touched her. That first day on the train, and then during the sorting, in flying classes and when they pass each other on the way to the dormitories. In her dreams, obscured by the light, transparent and desperate to find her, to save her. She could barely get out Clarke’s name but she might as well have screamed it.

“How does it work,” Clarke wonders out loud. The distance to the doors of the castle grow shorter, and with it her time with Lexa. She wants to spend it doing anything but speaking of the topic at hand, although it is the only thing linking them together. If not for it Clarke suspects they would have never gotten along. Lexa is selfless, in a way that Clarke could never manage.

“I can feel you,” Lexa draws in a wet breath, avoiding Clarke’s gaze and focusing her own on the disturbing creatures pulling their carriages along the pathway. It was no wonder they preferred not to be seen. “When you’re coming, looking for me. I try to stop you, but you always find your way.”

“The rain?”

“No,” she says. The creatures -a terrifying and completely fleshless breed of reptile and mammal, their black coats clinging to their skeleton, of which every bone is visible- stop before the castle, their wings slapping against each other for a comfortable place to rest; they serve more to remind her of her dreams than to distract her. “That wasn’t me.”

 

 

 

Clarke and Raven trudge up a long corridor, irritable at the news bestowed upon them by Headmaster Jaha. Divination, usually a class only started in the third year of Hogwarts, will be taught to them earlier as per the new curriculum.

Raven whines about the free time she could be using to study one of her muggle textbooks, and Clarke whines about the free time she could be spending improving her art, and they both enjoy having someone to talk to again as they near the end of the corridor.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Raven groans.

A narrow stairwell spirals up from the corridor. They both climb up the tight steps, puffing and getting dizzier and dizzier, until at last they hear the murmur of voices above them.

They look up at a circular trapdoor. Clarke mutters expletives underneath her breath, and lets Raven go up the ladder first so that she could catch her breath.

“Getting up here is too much of a fucking hassle, man,” Raven complains as they both settle into their seats at the back of the class.

“This better be worth it,” Clarke agrees darkly.

The classroom is filled with candles. Instead of wooden chairs there are sofas and arm chairs, and instead of a board there is a fireplace, its flame accompying the candles’ and making them seem redundant. There is even a cat, dozing in between crystal balls.

Two minutes pass in which they think the professor is late, but the idle chit chat they’d been indulging in slowly dissipates as the air suddenly turns misty. A figure comes out of the shadows, out of view. Clarke gets the impression of a giant insect, but once the shadow becomes corporeal it reveals a spindly woman, adorned in multiple shawls of multiple colors.

Her hair is wild and almost white in its blondness, cascading down her shoulders and down to touch her hips. An enormous pair of glasses sit on the bridge of her nose, her eyes incredibly magnified as they blink behind them.

“Professor Trelawney,” She introduces herself, spreading her arms by her sides as she gracelessly slides in front of the fireplace. “Welcome to Divination,” she takes a seat on an arm chair in front of the fireplace. As she speaks she moves her arms animatedly and the ends of her shawls flirt with the fire, threatening to spread its flame.

“I regret to inform you that some may simply be inadept at this class. Books will in fact not benefit you in Divination.”

A couple of Ravenclaws gasp as if on cue. The professor adds, pleased by their theatrics and playing along, “some simply can not see with all their eyes.”

Clarke tunes the woman out, taking a charcoal pencil out and beginning to doodle on a spare piece of parchment.

“Divination is an exact science, and though it may not be specific, it is unerringly accurate..”

The woman continues for a remarkable amount of time to speak of the difficulty of her subject, the dedication it requires, its eternal importance, yada yada yada. Clarke puts her pencil down, and is just about to show off the drawing to Raven when it’s snatched from her fingertips. She looks up to see the professor hovering above her, blinking her enormous blue eyes down at the doodle.

“I sense great trepidation coming from you, young lady,” the professor says in a low voice, waving the piece of parchment around. “Great anxiety for what is hiding behind the curtain of future.”

The professor peers disturbingly closer, stopping just inches away from Clarke’s face. She speaks slowly, emphasis on every word as if she is worried about the translation, or maybe making them up as she goes.

“Although you have already predicted its unveiling your reluctance to the subject matter prevents you from accepting what you see behind it.”

A finger comes up, long and thin and crooked, the bones pushing against the skin, threatening to escape. Clarke can hear Raven snickering next to her, but the rest of the class is incredibly silent. The finger comes closer and closer until it touches just between her eyebrows. Clarke winces at the contact and Professor Trelawney recoils with a gasp.

“Oh my,” she walks backwards, still staring at Clarke, “I have never seen such-“ she continues on, muttering under her breath, and finally turns around to slump in her seat.

“Class dismissed,” she shrieks.

 

 

The next class, mercifully, is in the same tower. Although it is all the way down in the first floor the endless flight of stairs is much easier to endure when you’re simply going down.

Their classmates seem to be giving her a wide berth. Clarke flushes bright pink in embarrassement and hurries to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Raven walks at a more leisurely pace, contemplating the happenings of the class with her fellow housemates.

“You can’t tell me you fell for a word she said,” Raven rolls her eyes.

“She’s legit,” Jasper insists. “And based on her reaction when she touched your friend, i’d suggest you maintain a safe distance.”

 

 

Clarke slumps into a seat at the back of the classroom self consciously. The class is empty still; Clarke had practically ran over.

There is a woman, at the far front of the class. She pays no mind to the sound of the door opening, or a student settling in their seat. There is the methodical, scratchy sound of chalk on the massive board, and then the sound of the doors slamming open.

“Anya?”

They both swivel around to stare at the girl standing by the doors.

“Lexa,” The woman smiles.

A breath seems to knock itself out from Lexa’s chest and she _runs_ , colliding with the woman halfway through the class.

Clarke sinks into her seat. She gets the feeling she’s intruding on something meant to be private- Lexa had never shown such childish joy before.

“I thought-“ Lexa starts, but Anya pushes her gently away and shushes her, an affectionate hand running over her head of hair. She spares a glance Clarke’s way and when they make eye contact Clarke quickly looks away. She jostles her bag, busying herself with taking out parchment and a quill.

There is a bit of aggravated whispering, harsher than their initial greeting, and then Lexa walks towards Clarke.

“This seat taken?” She asks, the tips of her ears pink.

“No,” Clarke says, although she doesn’t see the point. Lexa had already set her bag down and settled in next to her.

The first of the more punctual students walk in in a wave of loud laughter.

“So, you know each other?” Clarke tries.

“No, we just met,” Lexa snipes.

Clarke sinks further down her seat.

 

 

 

Lexa remains a broody, silent statue by her side. Clarke is intimately aware of her presence, fighting against every impulse not to sneak glances at her imposing figure.

Anya leans against a desk at the front of the class. The chalk lays discarded on the table, the tip worn off. She seems to have retired it.

“I read through your previous professor’s plan,” Anya starts. Her voice, a steady timbre, cuts through all the noise and demands their silence. “It was very unsatisfactory. Whatever rut you’d been allowed to fall into your first year, forget it. It’s my job to teach you how to arm yourself against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind.”

The entire class perks up, and Anya looks around knowingly.

“I have a certain knack for duelling. We will be focused on that for most the year. You will need this skill now more than ever. I’m sure you are all smart enough to know that.”

Clarke steals a look sideways. Lexa is facing front, admiration shining from her face. Clarke enjoys watching it play over her features before Lexa no doubtedly notices and conceals it completely.

“We’ll start easy: The Disarming Charm. I was surprised when told you had not learnt it yet. It is perhaps the most useful spell to use in a duel. Allow me to demonstrate.”

She calls Lexa to the front, and the girl dutifully obeys. She walks past rows of desks confidently, and every student watches eagerly as she stands across their new professor, wand in hand and a secret smile pulling at the very edge of her lips. Clarke thinks she may be the only one to notice it.

Lexa lets Anya guide her into position, though Clarke suspects it is merely for show. Then, Anya shouts: “Expelliarmus!”

A scarlet light bursts from Anya’s wand, and Lexa’s own wand flies from her hand. The entire class erupts into cheers and half hearted whooping before Anya shakes her head and demands silence.

“Who wants a go?” She asks jovially, and everyone lifts their hand up, eager to be the first to try.

 

 

 

Clarke and her friends reconvene at the great hall. Word about what went on during Divination seems to have gotten around to the entire school, and everyone turns their head to watch her as she walks past them.

“Not you too,” Clarke groans when she plops into a seat the Ravenclaw table and Raven falls silent. “That woman is completely crazy. Nuts!”

“I don’t know,” comes the new girl’s unwanted input. “My friend is a third year and he says Professor Trelawney was the one who predicted that the Death Eaters were going to come back again.”

She leans forward as if to say more, but she’s interrupted by a rough hand yanking at her shoulder.

“Octavia,” Bellamy hisses. “You know we’re not supposed to be here.”

“I was just making some new friends,” Octavia smiles ruthfully. Bellamy hesitates, but then her lips start to part to reveal canine, sharp edged teeth. “You know, gathering intel.”

“Shut up,” Bellamy grunts. He steers Octavia around despite her trying to shove his hands off and he keeps his back to Clarke and Raven even while they shout out to him bemusedly.

“This is the weirdest first day ever,” Raven mutters, watching them walk away.

 

 

 

“You asked to meet?” Clarke smiles, closing the door behind her nearly as soft.

“Yes,” Lexa sighs from where she is sitting cross legged on the floor. She pats the area near to her side and maybe it is just the late hour or the illusion of openness given by the night sky, the lack of secrecy the telescopes covering every corner give the silver moon and stars, but Clarke’s blood thrums with anticipation and she takes the offer gladly.

“The memory charm didn’t work, so i think we need to step it up a notch,” Lexa leans her head back against the wall, revealing the delicate arch of her neck. She yawns, “A forgetfulness potion.”

“You’re tired,” Clarke encroaches, trying to wipe any hints of concern from her voice to lessen her crime.

Lexa’s eyes flash towards her before drifting away, listless. “That is none of your concern,” she mutters. “As i was saying,” Lexa sighs again, “A forgetfulness potion is much stronger than a memory charm, and since every single first year has had to make them at least twice i suspect there’s an abundance of them stored away somewhere in the castle.”

“We’ve tried that before,” Clarke scours her brain for the right words, but in her rush to release them and attempt to be heard they come out clumsy and weak. “It didn’t work. We need help, we can’t do this on our own. You seem to trust professor Anya-“

“Don’t bring Anya into this,” Lexa snaps. She turns to glare at Clarke and Clarke sees, for the first time since their last meeting here in this same tower, the fire burning in her eyes.

“We can’t do this on our own,” Clarke argues, “You’re being tortured by death eaters, who know who i am and are looking for me. Both of our lives are in danger. We need help, can’t you see?”

“You didn’t seem so hesitant when it was only my life at stake,” Lexa snarls, sitting up straighter to rise to the challenge. “The only reason you’re sitting here, naive and stupid, is because _i_ sacrificed myself, _i_ protected you, from the very beginning.”

“I know,” Clarke looks away, overcome. “I’m saying you don’t have to do that anymore. We can save you, you can-“

“Tell me something, Clarke,” Lexa interrupts. “When you went back home for the summer, bearing a changed scar; When you dreamt that dream, and woke up terrified; When you packed your belongings into a single suitcase and headed to the train station- did you not carry with you the urge to spill all your secrets? Tell your mother, father, the people you love the most...”

Lexa pauses, watching her knowingly. “Why didn’t you?”

Clarke refuses to be put down, to walk around idly and let Lexa take the brunt of the unwelcome deal. “But you trust Anya,” she fights, angry. “I saw you.”

“She is my family,” Lexa shakes her head. “I can not give you everything.”

Clarke screams, sudden and unexpected. She leaps forward, unshackled, and she presses Lexa against the stone wall behind them with an arm across her collar. She opens her mouth to yell in her face but stops at the sight before her, the bags beneath her eyes and the fire dousing within them. Lexa doesn’t fight her off and Clarke stays there indecisively, panting with all the weight she carries.

“You promised,” Lexa reminds her. Clarke’s gaze flickers to where her chest rumbles beneath her arm and when she looks up again Lexa is so young and pretty and something else, something unexpected, different from her irascible, tempered nature. She is breaking at the seams or at the very least is very close.

“You’re shaking,” Clarke says, almost a whine.

Lexa’s arms hang by her sides and she’s quiet but for the barely there whimper escaping the prison of her teeth, clamped tightly against each other to keep herself together. Her fire gleams briefly and she scoffs, attempting to push Clarke off half heartedly.

“You don’t have to pretend to be strong,” Clarke tells her, pushing back against the thunder and tremble of her chest. “Not in front of me.”

“My pretending to be strong,” Lexa mocks. “Is the only thing keeping you alive.”

Clarke feels her anger rise again but she pushes it down. She understands why Lexa is doing this, and it’s with good reason.

“I’ll always keep my promise,” she says. The night is so quiet she can almost hear the stars twinkle. Lexa leans into her touch and Clarke feels a flash of hope at the tiny movement, but she’s just pushing her away so that she can get up.

“Patrol is in a half hour,” she says quietly, just as the door is slamming shut.

 

 

 

Clarke lays down in bed and wonders, private and wrong, if it would be easier to just kill her. If it would be a mercy, to relieve her of the torture, so that she never has to see Clarke again and Clarke never has to see her blank, bare, empty soul.

She manages a guilty half an hour of sleep before breakfast and she thinks it is only fair that if Lexa doesn’t sleep she doesn’t get to either.

_If Lexa doesn’t sleep she shouldn’t either..._

The idea has her springing out of bed. She gathers her robes and satchel, rejuvenated, and hurries out the dormitories.


	4. Mayhem at Hogwarts

Clarke doesn’t really get the chance to speak to Lexa until later during breakfast. She uses the time between now and then to dutifully browse the library, arranging a pile of parchment filled with solutions. And then, at seven o’clock sharp, she hurries to the great hall, where she knows only one person would be awake and already getting the day started.

“I’ve got an idea,” she starts, before she has even sat down. Lexa blinks at her and hums noncomittedly. The bags underneath her eyes are ever darker and it is clear that she is even more tired than the day before. She hasn’t slept.

“What’s to say, that if we do try the forgetfulness potion thing...”

“Which we will,” Lexa interrupts.

“What’s to say,” Clarke repeats, glaring at her counterpart. “Your memory won’t come back the second you see me again, just like last time?”

Lexa’s mask, precariously slippery as it nowadays was, slid slightly more off her face. She looked, all of a sudden, panicked and struck. Clarke thinks Lexa is willing to be tortured just so she could get a few hours of sleep.

Clarke will figure out how to stop the dreams. But first, this. She needs Lexa out of her way.

“And i suppose you thought of a solution,” Lexa drawls.

“Yes.”

Clarke slams the pieces of parchment down, each detailing different solutions with desperate chicken scrawl. It is such an innocent feeling, to be embarrassed about her handwriting in front of Lexa, that Clarke flushes red with uncertainty from head to toe. She’d almost forgotten her crush, and the feelings that come with it. She can’t afford to be young, not anymore.

Lexa hums again, unknowing, and shuffles through the parchment lazily.

“Potion for dreamless sleep,” she reads. “We can’t be sure that this one will work... and it is so advanced that even seventh year Ravenclaws wouldn’t be able to help us... Unless it is in stock in the potions storeroom... but no the risk wouldn’t be worth it...”

It goes on for a while, Lexa muttering to herself as if she is completely alone while Clarke awkwardly watches her fingers trail along the ink of her quill, her eyes squint a bit. Lexa’s teeth bite at her bottom lip and Clarke looks away uncomfortably.

Lexa examined the other pieces of parchment quickly, her eyes merely skimming the pages.

“You’re going to help me,” she said, and it was neither a question nor a statement. Her mask slipped a bit more and she looked relieved, like Clarke had helped lessen a weight on her shoulders.

“Of course, Lexa.”

Clarke ignored the almost pleasant ache in her stomach and the strange words dangling at the tip of her tongue, threatening to jump off the ledge and into the water. She slowly covered Lexa’s hand on top of the table, testing.

“I’ll look over these,” Lexa told her, signalling to the parchment beneath their hands.

“Okay,” Clarke nodded. “I’ll see whats up with the forgetfulness potion.”

Lexa’s mouth lifted up into a wry smile and Clarke stumbled, disconnecting their hands so that she can busy herself with tucking her hair behind her ear. She misses the touch immediately.

“What’s this?” A voice pipes up, and Octavia appears behind Lexa just as the words reach them. “A lovers’ tryst?”

“Read one too many of your mother’s muggle stories, Octavia?” Lexa snipes smartly, quickly gathering the parchment with steady hands and tucking them into her bag. She is walking away before Octavia can even think to respond, left bumbling like an idiot.

“I thought your guardian didn’t want you hanging around us?” Clarke asks, arching a brow. Octavia scoffs, stops for a second. Then, seemingly not having been able to come up with anything to say, scoffs again and heads off to the Slytherin table.

 

Clarke had a bad feeling, like something was terribly, terribly wrong; or that something was going to be wrong. She couldn’t skip class, because then her housemates would hate her for losing them points so early in the school year, but she couldn’t exactly focus in class either, because she kept glancing off to where Lexa was, making sure she is alive and breathing and okay, because somehow everything Clarke has ever felt has tied with her and she can’t bear for her to be hurting.

But everything is normal, and so Clarke carries on pretending that she’s normal, even though there was something terribly, terribly wrong hanging on the precipice, and she felt it all the way to her fingertips.

 

Clarke went to bed, feeling like an anvil was pressing against her chest. She tried to distract herself, tried to think of anything else. The way Lexa sometimes smiled, only ever with the very edge of one side of her lips; her father’s big hands and the way they would press against her forehead so warm; inside jokes she had with Raven and how much she missed Wells and his brotherly hugs. But then she thought of her mother, and her betrayal, the scar on her side and _how could she do this to her own daughter._

She burrowed into the mattress, trying to catch a breath, overly conscious of the other girls in their own beds and trying to remain calm, her pulse in her ears, so loud she could hear it, pounding onto the pillow and reverberating against her head.

She clenches and writhes and curls with the effort to remain silent and to hold her tears and to be strong, for Lexa, for her dad, for all the people who should be safe but are in danger because of her. Her eyes slip shut with her agony and she slips into a fitful sleep without even realising it, grateful for just a moment’s reprieve.

 

She wakes up too late to catch breakfast and just early enough to make it to her first class, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Her favorite. Lexa’s favorite too, she reckons.

She’d never felt guilty for sleeping before, but she’s felt it everyday this year and especially now, sitting next to Lexa at the back of the class and knowing how tired the girl is.

Professor Anya is not here yet. Clarke leans a bit closer to Lexa to say hello, but Lexa shushes her, rolling her eyes. She stiffens, gritting her teeth against the dissapointment and trying to remain calm, but before she can work herself up to anger Lexa touches her hand where it is resting on her thigh beneath the table, soft. She looks over at Lexa and her eyes remind her, _secret_ , and she promises to keep it so, hoping Lexa can see it in the determined, upward curve of her chin.

 

  
“This one,” Lexa tells her, hushed though she needn’t be up here on the highest tower. Clarke feels, for some reason, exceptionally mystified about the stars today, and she looks up at them, surrounding a quarter of a moon, watching them wink and dance for them, putting on a show.

“Clarke,” Lexa says, and where before there would be annoyance now there is only gentle reproach. Clarke cuts her gaze back down to earth. She turns her head and their faces come very close.

“This one,” Lexa repeats, pushing a piece of parchment into her hand. Their fingers brush the slightest bit and Clarke notices her messy letters: Wideye potion.

“Okay,” Clarke nods. “We should start gathering the supplies we need.”

“We have potions tomorrow.”

Clarke reads the recipe: 6 snake fangs, 4 measures of standard ingredient, 6 dried billywig stings, 2 sprigs of wolfspane.

They should be discussing the logistics of their plan, but Clarke’s mind is elsewhere.

“Lexa..” Clarke shuffles a bit closer, their sides fitting snuggly together. “My mother...”

She can’t even finish the sentence. Lexa holds eye contact with her, and Clarke’s throat work with the words but nothing comes out.

“I suspected someone close to either one of us had to be involved,” Lexa admits, bald. “I only have Anya. I was afraid...”

She trails off and Clarke shuffles closer and closer. Something inside her felt like the night, dark and hungry and devouring. “I’m glad it wasn’t her,” she says, and the rest of her words cling to the edge of her tongue as if it were a cliff. You have me, too. “I know i brought you pain-“

“It’s not your fault,” Lexa counters immediately. It is weak and Clarke knows she doesn’t believe it.

“But you blame me. You hate me.”

Lexa doesn’t deny it.

The sky rumbled and flashed, and Clarke watched a purple bolt of lighting strike down, the sky flashing briefly before going dark. In the brief moment of its light Clarke glimpsed a feline creature, black enough it melted back into the darkness.

The cat stalked up to them, jumping past Clarke to settle in Lexa’s lap. “You have a cat?” Clarke blinked.

“Yes.” Lexa patted the cat’s head, tickled underneath its chin. The wanting built up inside of Clarke.

“How did i not know that?”

“You don’t know me,” Lexa explained indelicately. Clarke’s mouth went sort of shapeless.

Lexa had known it would hurt her, but she said it anyway, punishing. The night splits you open, makes you say things you wouldn’t ordinarily say, things you keep quiet though they are the most important. It was an infection, and Lexa had passed it on.

“Would it make you feel better,” she asked, “if you could hurt me?”

Clarke could sense the ice freezing over again, the coldness returning to coat Lexa’s heart. She wished she could reverse time and remain quiet.

“Yes,” Lexa’s throat moves silently, swallowing. “But i wouldn’t.”

The sky grumbled again. Lexa moved to get up.

“We can’t hate each other,” Clarke tells her, feeling desperate. With Lexa in the centre, covering the moon with her silhouette, the stars were overcome. “It’s what they want.”

“They don’t want us to hate each other,” Lexa rolls her eyes. “They don’t care if we hate each other. They’re on an agenda, and they are making their way through.”

Lexa puts down the cat, and it slithers through the slit of pitch black darkness and out of the door.

“Meanwhile you are wasting our time discussing philosophy.”

“You know what, fuck you.” Clarke pushed against the stone floor with both hands and lifted herself up, dusting the back of her jeans and snarling as she moves to follow the cat. “I did not ask you for anything, i didn’t ask you to sacrifice yourself. I’d be happy if you ratted me out right here and got this over with.”

The lightning struck again, filling Clarke with strength. “You want to drink a stupid fucking potion and— give up? Fine, do it. But this is not you, and we both know it.”

 

The next morning Clarke went to the library, as usual, and got to work gathering more information and jotting down the steps for brewing their potion. Once that was done with and the timing was more favorable to when people started going down to the great hall for breakfast, she set out to find Lexa.

People were swarming in, the area a cocktail of the green and silver of slytherin, the canary yellow of hufflepuff and the blue of ravenclaw, the scarlet of gryffindor. Clarke headed to her house’s table, where Raven always sat waiting for her.

Lexa was nowhere to be seen.

 

It was a weekend, no classes or responsibilities. Raven and Clarke, minus Bellamy (who had been avoiding them like the plaque), set out to the grounds. They each grab a broomstick from the shed and head off to where their friends wait for them, near the edge of the forest.

They play all through the morning, and into the afternoon. They head back to the castle just before lunch for a quick shower, and Clarke realizes with a jolt that she’d forgotten all about Lexa. She scrubs at her skin hard, scratching it red, but she never manages to feel clean.

 

“What’s going on,” she asks during lunch, shoving a spoonful of chocolate pudding into her mouth. “What’s all the gossip about?”

“You haven’t heard?” The girl leans closer eagerly. “Apparently Lexa Woods snuck out past curfew last night. Peeves found her passed out, near Professor Anya’s quarters.”

“But thats not just it..” She paused a moment, as if she was telling a grand story. Clarke wanted to shake her. “There was a bump, on the back of her head. Someone hit her.”

 

Clarke couldn’t remember the seconds between storming out of the great hall and arriving at the hospital tower. There was a sort of hum to the air, and it pressed in all around her, propelling her forwards. She banged on the double doors, shaken, and barged in.

“What’s wrong?” Nurse Jackson appeared by her side instantly.

“I’m here to see someone,” Clarke told him frantically. “Lexa? Woods.”

The nurse hardened immediately. “No visitors allowed.”

“But she’s my friend,” Clarke insisted. “You have to let me see her, please!”

“Sorry, dear.” The nurse put a hand on Clarke’s shoulder and tried to guide her to the door, but Clarke struggled against him.

“Lexa!” she yelled, straining to look further into the wing.

“What’s wrong with you,” hissed Nurse Jackson. “This is a hospital, people are sick. Your friend is fine, she just needs-“

“Let her in.”

They both froze at once. The sound came from far back the room, behind a privacy screen. Clarke ran up to it and pulled the sheets apart before the nurse could say anything else.

“Lexa,” she breathed.

“Fine,” the nurse snapped from behind them. “One hour.”

 

Lexa looked small, surrounded by white bed sheets and white walls and white pillows. The image, to Clarke, looked apocalyptic. A prophecy; the start of the something terribly wrong. Lexa never looked small before.

Different questions warred with each other inside Clarke’s head: _are you okay? what happened? are you hurt? did you dream?_

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lexa interrupts before any one wins, desolate.

Clarke wanted to argue.

_who hit you?_

“I just want to pretend it didn’t happen,” Lexa begged. She had yet to look at Clarke. Her eyes were bleak. “Just for now. Just for a little bit.”

Clarke obeyed. With a sad twist of her mouth she brushed a few strands of Lexa’s hair with her fingertips, and when Lexa did not push her away her touch grew bolder. It felt dangerous, like she was holding something wild and taming it, but it was not as thrilling as it would have been had the situation been different.

Clarke fusses over her, getting her a glass of water when her voice even hints to cracking and tucking the blankets even tighter when she catches Lexa shivering and glaring when Lexa even attempts to sit upright. Lexa remains sullen at the attention, and is so disgruntled she forces herself to sleep.

Clarke fusses still, staring long enough to glimpse the pulse beating in her neck, listening hard enough to hear the swoosh of breath leaving her lips. She’s praying to whoever the hell is in charge, Merlin, God, Zeus, the Universe, to please, please let Lexa rest just this once, when the double doors at the entrace of the wing slam open.

She turns around, fully intending to yell at the people coming in that this is a hospital, the same way Nurse Jackson had yelled at her not an hour before; but it’s her mom, standing there and staring at her wide eyed, Thelonius Jaha behind her, Lexa behind Clarke.

She stands up, shaky. Her legs feel like jello, unable to hold her up. She leans against the bed for support.

“Mom,” It felt like her heart hadn’t risen with her when she’d gotten off the chair, heavy itself. “What’re you doing here?”

Her mother smiles reassuringly, although it just seems wicked to Clarke. She strides forward, faltering only once when Clarke subtly presses her thighs back against the bed, trying to lean away but not willing to move aside.

“What’re you doing here,” she asks. There’s concern in her voice, but her eyes... Clarke looks from her, back to Jaha, and back again, unsure. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Clarke gulps.

Her mother looked the same. The same shades in her eyes, the same lines near her mouth. She pulls Clarke into a hug and it is completely possible that Clarke had overreacted, that her mother has nothing to do with any of this. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Her mother pulls away. “Huh?”

“What’re you doing here?”

Abby’s eyebrows furrow, though her mouth remains smiling. “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” she jests.

 

Lexa keeps her eyes closed, her fingers relaxed, her mouth slack. She listened to Clarke call a woman her mom, then practically interrogate her. She listened to her mother’s excuses, Nurse Jackson’s voice joining the mix, buttering Clarke up and flattering her. Clarke was growing confused, she could tell, and wary- but she refused to leave Lexa’s side.

Although every muscle in Lexa’s body was frozen, her chest swelled with thanks.

The voices started getting louder, more irritable. And then: there was a loud, sudden bang, and a weight came crashing down and on top of Lexa’s legs.

“Why would you do that,” Clarke’s mothers hissed.

“She wasn’t going to budge,” came Headmaster Jaha’s controlled tone. “She suspects you.”

“She doesnt suspect me,” Clarke’s mother scoffed. “I’m her mother.”

“You are here, are you not?”

There was a sort of short, begrudged silence, and then the crushing weight was lifted off of Lexa’s legs. “Take her to my office,” Jaha demanded. “The ritual begins at midnight.”

 

Clarke rose slowly. Her vision opened up at the middle to a spot of grey light and then expanded and expanded until she could see color. Her limbs felt like they weighed a ton. All she wanted to do was sink into the sofa and stay there for eternity, but she forced herself to get up.

She looked around the room. It was interesting, full of little noises. There were silver instruments standing on spindle legs on top of every surface, puffing out smoke. There was a cage with a beautiful bird in it, red and yellow intermingled with all shades of orange. In the back of the room stood a claw footed desk, the wall behind it filled with rows and rows of portraits: old hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses.

Clarke shot herself off the platform. She spun in position, looking for a way out, but there was no door, or anything that resembled an entrace. There was a persistent throb of pain deep in her stomach that came with the knowledge that you were certainly, irrefutably, caught.

She patted her body furiously, looking for the familiar shape of her wand. She was sure that she was in Jaha’s office because of the portraits behind the desk, just like she was sure Jaha was the one to render her unconscious because she’d seen him standing behind Abby.

“You knew this was going to happen,” a voice started, and Clarke gasped, spinning to point her wand uncertainly in the general direction of where she thought it came from.

“You knew it was going to happen,” the voice said again. “But you laid down and let it.”

Clarke’s eyes flitted around frantically, looking for a possible suspect. Her eyes fell upon an old, battered hat perched on a stool near the desk. The sorting hat.

She recognized it to be its voice immediately.

“What are you talking about,” Clarke demanded hoarsely.

“I saw it in you,” the hat’s lips curled. “During the sorting. It was clear as day.”

Clarke wondered at her strength, remaining standing though she felt as old and battered and patched as the hat speaking to her. She swiveled around and promptly threw up onto the hardwood floors, again and again until all was left of her was a hopeless, retching, wreck.

“Revolting,” the hat commented. “Glad that’s over. Stand up.”

Clarke wiped her mouth with her sleeve and grimaced at the roiling of her stomach as she got up.

“Where is the door,” she croaked tiredly.

“Look underneath my shelf.”

Clarke gasped, and bent over again, but she only heaved. She stumbled towards the hat and followed its instructions.

“Take it out,” the hat guided.

Clarke examined the half opened drawer, shining with a blue light. She wrenched it open and took out a large, stone bowl. She carried it to the desk, its contents splashing against the edges and threatening to spill onto the ground. “Careful,” the hat hissed, but Clarke barely cared for anything anymore.

“Now, you look inside.”

Clarke watched lights swirl in the thick, blue, slimy fluid.

“What if i don’t want to?” She asked.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”

Clarke tucked the wand back into her robes, sucked in a breath, and dunked.

“How elegant,” muttered the hat disdainfully.


End file.
